I read about toxicity of uranium plutonium and polonium but I don’t understand how do we know it’s a chemical toxicity. In case of Litvinenko poisoning, Wikipedia says «victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome» so it was not toxicity of polonium that killed him, it was radioactivity. Can radioactive heavy metals kill cause harm in the same way lead, cadmium and other heavy metals poison you. Or most damage will be from radiation.
In: Physics
No one has mentioned decay chains yet. Radioactive isotopes like Uranium-232 and Plutonium-236 decay into other radioisotopes such as: radon-22, mercury-205, and iodine-231. Additionally, a majority pf isotopes create or stablize as lead isotopes.
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